Agenda: A long, painful journey but in the end a predictable path

By the year end there will be fewer banks but they will be stronger. It is time to get on with it, and channel energies in a different direction

Is it so unbelievable that Bank of Ireland should be more than one-third owned by the state? (Sasko Lazarov)
‘Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to
come back a short distance correctly” — The Zoo Story, Edward Albee.

For all the moments of high and absurd drama, and occasional intrigue, there
is nothing terribly surprising in the outcome of the Irish bank
reconstruction.

Had anybody said, say 18 months ago, that Anglo Irish Bank and Irish
Nationwide would be set for a wind-down; or that Allied Irish Banks and
Educational Building Society would be nationalised, or that Bank of Ireland
would be more than one-third owned by the state, would it have been so
unbelievable? Of course not. For all the bile, venom and rancour, the
banking crisis has merely reached what looks remarkably like a logical
conclusion. It has just taken quite a bit longer and cost an awful lot more
than most observers first thought. The amount of time and